Question about Druitt's occupation

[Rosella]

I never said anywhere in my post that Monty 'stayed at home looking after the younger kids' after university. I said that he was probably deciding 'where next', medicine or the law. His younger brothers would have been at public school anyway, his sisters would have had a governess.

The fact that the entire estate came in at over 16,000 pounds is neither here nor there (and Montague's mother and sisters were the main recipients of that anyway. I wrote that Monty's estate received an over one thousand pounds legacy from Ann Druitt.) The annual income from Druitt snr's investments is the important factor.

After Druitt snr retired his investments could have been subject to the vagaries of the rural depression of the time if he had invested in land, orchards, farms etc. I have never suggested that he would have had non-productive investments.

[Dr. John Watson]

This question may sound very ignorant, but why is so much discussion here centred on the fact that Druitt was a doctor or studied medicine?

Hello Mondegreen! All suspicion concerning Montague Druitt originated with the so-called "MacNaghten Memorandum" which, on close examination, is seen to be replete with errors and unsubstantiated rumor. MacNaghten was not appointed Chief Constable until 1889 and had no direct contact with the Ripper investigation. His statements regarding Druitt clearly are based not on results of any police investigation, but rather on private speculation among colleagues. Druitt's name never appears in any known police reports of the time, and leading Ripper investigators like Abberline and Swanson never considered him a viable suspect. MacNaghten states in his memorandum that, "from private information I have no doubt that his own family believed him to have been the murderer." In no way does this suggest he heard something directly from a member of Druitt's family, as has often been inferred, but strongly points to a second-hand comment from one or more police colleagues. The basis for such speculation has never been determined.

Here are some other quotes from MacNaghten regarding his favorite Ripper suspect:

"Of course he was a maniac, but I have a very clear idea who he was and how he committed suicide, but that, with other secrets, will never be revealed by me. I have destroyed all my documents, and there is now no record of the secret information which came into my possession at one time or another." - Daily Mail, 2 June, 1913

"Although . . . the Whitechapel murderer, in all probability, put an end to himself soon after the Dorset Street affair in November, 1888, certain facts, pointing to this conclusion, were not in possession of the police till some years after I became a detective officer." Days of My Years, 1914

"I incline to the belief that the individual who held up London in terror resided with his own people, that he absented himself from home at certain times, and that he committed suicide on or about the 10th of November 1888." Days of My Years, 1914

Aside from the familiar reference to his suspect's suicide, doesn't that last statement make you think more of Kosminski than Druitt?

To me it's obvious that MacNaghten had no solid evidence connecting Druitt with the Ripper killings. Had he anything resembling a document or record he could refer to, he would not have repeatedly mistaken Druitt's profession and age. He was swayed, I think, by the coincidence of Druitt's suicide closely following the Mitre Court murder, after which it appears no further Ripper murders were committed (although similar killings did take place).

John

[Robert]

Hi Rosella

Not sure I'd call Valentine's school just a crammer. Tnere were a couple of 'honourables' among the pupils in 1881.

[Jonathan H]

Why the Conventional Wisdom is Wrong

To Dr. John Watson

Everything you have written is contestable and, arguably, entirely wrong.

For example, Macnaghten was there for the Ripper investigation between June 1889 and March 1891 (he spent many nights in the East End trying to catch the kilelr).

He was there to investigate the posthumous belief in Druitt as the fiend.

He was there to go to Colney Hatch and inquire about Kosminski, in Feb 1891, or later.

We now know that belief in Druitt as the Ripper began among his own people in Dorset, and leaked to the media in 1891, and not with an allegedly muddled Macnaghten in 1894.

The Macnaghten 'memo', unofficial, sexed-up version, was used for public relations purposes and therefore could not contain information that would embarrass either the Druitt family or Scotland Yard (it enhanced the latter's rep by deceitfully claiming that the doctor was about to be arrested).

We now know that George Sims is a Mac-source at one remove. He writes about the doctor's "friends" being in contact with Scotland Yard in 1888. If you put this together with the Macnaghten memoirs, we can see that it was the family conferring only with the Chief Constable in 1891.

There is no evidence in the extant record, whatsoever, that any other polcie knew anything about Montague Druitt in a Ripper context (though there had been a major, middle-aged doctor suspect in 1888 who had been the subject of intense police interest: Francis Tumblety).

Abberline's 1903 comments about "a young doctor" and a "student" who was the subject of a "Home Office Report" and was a Ripper suspect in 1888 do not match Montague (but are a match for medical student John Sanders).

Anderson believed his chosen Jack was deceased. So was Macnaghten's. but the former's suspect was actually alive, and Macnaghten knew this. Plus Anderson and Macnaghten loathed each other.

In "Laying the Ghost of Jack the Ripper" that you quote from Macnaghten concedes what we can see from other primary sources between 1888 and 1895: Druitt was never a Ripper suspect until "some years after" he took his own life, he did not take his own life immediately after Miller's Court, the killer was a "Simon Pure" Gentile, and not a Jew, and that the ex-chief's belief was based on information received, presumably from "his own people" (there is no mention of a go-between). In this chapter Druitt is not described as a doctor or as middle-aged.

It is true that Macnaghten falsely implies that the killer lived with his own family and they noticed he was "absented" on the nights of the murders. It is cheekily lifted from "The Lodger" a popular novel. Mac tries to debunk the novel first before stealing from it (a ruse that did not fool the reviewer at the "New York Times Review of Books" in 1914).

Druitt did not die at the right time, he died two years too early. Macnaghten spent many years convincing the public, via Sims ,that the police knew at the time that Mary Kelly was the final victim--but it was a lie. The "autumn of terror" is a piece of spin that misleads researchers to this day, like yourself.

The "North Country Vicar" source of 1899 provides the reason why Druitt's own family, later an MP and a police chief would believe such a ghastly thing about one of their own, from their own class--from their own family! He had confessed to a priest, and the confession was judged to be lucid and credible.

The portrait of Macnaghten as a hands-off desk-jockey relying on a bit of half-recalled gossip is totally implausible. A reading of the primary sources by, and about, this polcie chief shows he was the exact opposite: hands-on, a self-styled sleuth, often off by himself, and with a sense of himself forever apart due to being an Old Etonian. He loved his boys at the Yard, but he never confided in any of them about finding the identity of 'Jack the Ripper'--not until, he retired and brought up the subject of the Ripper at that bombshell 1913 press conference, a case with which he ahd never before been associated with in the public mind.

[Jonathan H]

To Rosella

I am a revisionist outside here, and a heretic inside the tent.

You see, I do not think that 'Jack the Ripper' is a mystery.

It was solved at the time by a police sleuth and the solution later shared with the public, though inevitably partly veiled to protect a respectable family. In the Edwardian Era it was generally considered, and accepted, as solved: the drowned "Mad Doctor".

Was it an absolute solution? No, as the likely fiend was already deceased when identified. There can never be an absolute solution, only a probable one.

The fictional part was that he was a doctor and the factual element was that he was a tormented suicide.

It was only when the sleuth died, prematurely, in the early 1920's, that the case was rebooted as a mystery by a famous writer (one who knew the drowned doctor was some kind of con job). Before his death the slueth had tried to detach the 'doctor' from 'suicide' in his jaunty memoir, but it did not get traction among journalists or later writers on the subject.

Between the wars the doctor element persisted in pop culture, arguably due to the strength of the fictional classic from which it had been cribbed: 'Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde' by Robert Louis Stevenson (1886) whilst the tormented suicide fell away and was largely forgotten.

When it was all rediscovered in the post-war era the veiled, discretionary element was not also rediscovered, hence the 'debunking' of the police sleuth and his likeliest suspect because the latter was a suicide and not a surgeon.

This calcified into the conventional wisdom--as fact--by the late 20th Century, as can be seen by Dr John Watson's post. So monolithic is this opinion that for many it is impervious to the discovery of new sources, or the reinterptration of old ones.

[Rosella]

Yes, Robert, schools for youths who had left their public schools were known as 'crammers' in the 19th century. This was because the teachers there 'crammed' specific knowledge needed to pass exams into say the Diplomatic Service, the Indian Civil Service, the mathematical and technical knowledge needed for the Sappers, and so on, into their young brains.

Valentine's school did take younger pupils too, but I have read that its better days were behind it by the late 1880's. It certainly took youths, young men, from the middle and upper classes.

[Rosella]

I've just been looking through the revised edition of Rumbelow's 'The Complete Jack the Ripper'. (My old copy from decades ago is dog-eared!)

Rumbelow remarks in this that earning a living as a barrister was often precarious. 'Without private income or exceptional talent, the failure rate of such fledglings was very high: a contemporary wrote that, of eight thousand barristers only one in eight could make a living.'

Druitt's work as Special Pleader didn't involve courtroom appearances. On reflection Druitt might have been better off choosing medicine and having a practice near the family home, where the Druitt name was known

[GUT]

But of course we have records of some of MJD's courtroom appearances.

And yes most people might make more $$ as a Dr, but is not what everyone wants to do, Druitt may have detested the idea of being a medico.

[Rosella]

He may have indeed, GUT!

[Graham]

Rumbelow remarks in this that earning a living as a barrister was often precarious. 'Without private income or exceptional talent, the failure rate of such fledglings was very high: a contemporary wrote that, of eight thousand barristers only one in eight could make a living.'

Classic example of a barrister who didn't quite cut it was W S Gilbert of Gilbert & Sullivan fame. One of his clients was so disgusted with his performance as her defence counsel that she threw her shoe at him in court. Fortunately for him, WSG's money-making talent lay in a very different direction.

Graham

[Rosella]

Did the judge rule it a contempt of court? Poor old W.G.

[Mayerling]

The Legend of the Failed Solicitor

Where does this stupid idea come from any how oh how does it keep coming up. On the contrary he seems to have had a good career in law. He's called to the Bar in '85 accumulates a tidy sum by death. Yes he takes work as a Special Pleader, which could of itself be lucrative we have reports of a couple of cases he is briefed in, and you would have no trouble finding Barristers that you cannot, 125 years later find one case for.

Hi Gut,

I agree that the poor legal career of Druitt does not seem to bet buried as it should be. Two reasons for it's longevity.

First Druitt had the teaching position at Valetine's school up to a week or so before his death. That he became a teacher suggested his initial career choice was a failure.

Second the story of his failure as a barrister dates back to the initial popularization of his identification by Farson and Cullen. In particular Cullen, who certainly painted a pitiable and bleak failure in "Autumn of Terror". Cullen even wondered if Druitt was going to become a doctor as his father had hoped.

Jeff

[Mayerling]

Did the judge rule it a contempt of court? Poor old W.G.

Actually Gilbert later used his legal background in his written work, especially in "Trial By Jury" (regarding breach of promise suits) and "Iolanthe" (regarding the Lord Chancellor and wards of chancery) and even The Pirates of Penzance (regarding how long an apprenticeship agreement actually lasts). Legallisms abound all over the operettas. In "Ruddigore/Ruddygore" Sir Despard (Robin Oakapple) has to commit a crime a day to live. His ancestors are not impressed by his crimes. He has given his valet "Gideon Crawle/Adam Goodheart" a forged check. One of the ghosts says, "But he has not banker!"
Not stunned, Sir Despard just points, "I didn't say I forged his banker, I forged his check!"

Gilbert briefly appeared (in 1875) for the first known "Whitechapel" killer, Henry Wainwright, at a hearing. But he did it to avoid jury duty.

Jeff

[Rosella]

I quite like Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, not Ruddigore so much, though! Wainwright's arrest was a farce in itself, loading himself and parcels of dismembered mistress into a cab with his 'helper' running along behind and looking for a policeman! I'd have taken the jury dury if I'd been WG!

Murderpedia has Wainwright hanged outside Newgate in 1875! What!!

Gosh, it's a long time since I've read 'Autumn of Terror'. I can remember enjoying it as a teenager.